In English, "some" means "unspecified number/amount". So, it doesn't matter if there are five, ten, fifteen or twenty chairs in a room, I can still say "There are some chairs in the room"?

I'm confused by the distinction between a compound unity versus a absolute unity when one is used in a sentence.

Examples of an absolute unity are generally given as something like " He is one man."

Examples of compound unities are usually worded like " Weave each string together so that they become one string."

The problem is I'm not certain if what makes the word "one"a reference  to  a compound unity is the fact that the item is made of multiple things

or the fact that the sentence specifically references the fact they're made of many things.

I want to say that the sentence " I have one rope" has the word one refer to a absolute unity.

I also want to say that the sentence " Weave eat string together so that the become one string." Uses the word one to refer to a compound unity.

Is this correct or is any statement with the word one being used to denote the number of an item that is made up of more items considered a compound usage of one?

For example "I have one Legion".

Is this still compound just because a legion is made of many people?

Or is it absolute because the sentence does not specifically draw attention to the fact that the legion is made of many?

First, I don't see how the original text could have literally said "virgin", when we have a reasonable amount of evidence that it said "עַלְמָה". Nor could the text have meant "virgin" because English is not The Universal Semantic Language, where meaning across languages is defined in terms of English words. The first question that should be asked is what the evidence is that עַלְמָה refers (ever, generally, or in this instance) to a female who has not had sex (however that be defined). At which point, one would investigate all of the attestations of the word (all 7) and determine whether it definitely has that meaning in any other context (IMO, no). We might find that the word is only assigned the translation "virgin" in one text occurrence. We would also look at the masculine word עֶלֶם, which conventionally translates to "boy", to see if it too evidences the added condition "has not had sex". One would also want to check whether there exists an unambiguous Hebrew term that means what we mean when we say "virgin" – בְּתוּלָה. Maybe it too is ambiguous, but if the author's intent was to specifically communicate "has not had sex", why wouldn't the author just say that? In a Scalian court of law, the evidence would be found to show that the text says "girl" and not "virgin".

You would also want to look for evidence that the corresponding term in later translations and texts (Greek, Latin) had that specific meaning, that is, determine from context what the meaning of παρθένος is, and the meaning of virgo, and check for consistency (is עַלְמָה always translated as παρθένος, or only in one verse?). As I understand, there are two Greek translations for עַלְמָה, παρθένος and νεανις: when and why are there different Greek translations?

In contemporary English, if you say "My brother is a virgin", that means i.e. literally entails that your brother has not had sex. If you say "My brother is dead", that only linguistically entails permanent death because death is not a reversible condition. Whereas, talking about your virgin brother does not linguistically entail that he is a permanent virgin. This is not a quirk of English, this is a fact about human language, that conclusions of the kind "is and will forever after remain" are not linguistically entailed, unless you actually include some expression to that effect – "Behold, a permanent virgin shall conceive...".

I have seen people tear each other's throats out over the following sentence.


"Behold, he Virgin shall conceive and bear a son , and call him Immanuel".

The controversy for those who don't know is the Hebrew word Alma.

Supposedly it could mean young woman or it could mean virgin, but the reason everyone is so uptight about the translation is because it's supposed to be evidence for the Virgin birth of Jesus.

However it seems to me perfectly possible that the original text literally says "virgin" and for the sentence to still mean " the person who is a virgin now will have sex and give birth later".

It seems like if you were to argue that " the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son" must mean that the Virgin will be a virgin at the time that she gives birth that you would also have to say the following:

"The Virgin shall grow up and receive the Medal of honor" is true if and only if the subject of that sentence is a still virgin at the time of receiving the Medal of Honor.

That seems absurd to me.

Am I correct that " the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son" is grammatically consistent with both the interpretation that the Virgin will be a virgin at the time of the birth and the interpretation that the Virgin will no longer be a virgin at the time of the birth?

What you wrote makes sense in general to me.

As for Manner, that's a complicated issue. Talmy's approach makes sense because it's describing it as something modifying another component. But that doesn't mean it reduces to some simple meaning. In fact, it seems to me that it would be inherently variable in meaning. The similarity is just in what it modifies-- in the structural meaning.